Oh man this is Not Groovy

Quoting Calidain:

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What is the justification???

The music was only licensed for broadcast. New licenses must be negotiated for DVD, and the price is usually prohibitive.

-drj

Well, poopies.  I was really looking forward to this set.  Now I don't even want it.  They changed Jennifer's DOORBELL!  That was a classic!

Well, this plain sucks the big hatchi.  I loved that show principally for the music.  What did they replace everything with?  Freakn' Barry Manilow??? .  They can keep their damn DVD.  Not gonna waste a dime on those bastards.

Quoting Voltaire53:

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Persoanlly I hate the system and believe there should be some sort of legal change where (if a piece has already been cleared for broadcast) there is a "maximum percentage of profit" that can be charged for its use in follow up materials like DVDs... however this isn't the case and is unlikely to be so.

So, a creator should only have limited rights to earning money from his/her creation?

Disney would love you... or do you not remember Peggy Lee's lawsuit against Disney? When she signed the contract to work with Disney on "Lady & the Tramp", she insisted on including a clause setting royalties not only for theatrical and television showings of the movie with her voice, her songs and her singing, but also included royalties for technologies yet invented. So when the video tape release of L&tT came out, Disney felt they owed her nothing more. In 1987, she sued and in 1991, she won... that video tape reproductions and sales were exactly what that clause would cover.

So now, decades after the TV series, a DVD set is released, but the owners of the music ought not to get paid for its use? A person/company leases the rights to property and you own those rights forever without additional compensation?

It's a shame that all the episodes will be compromised, but I believe had they paid the royalties for this DVD's music, sales would be higher, offsetting the costs. As for unobtainable rights, that's where WKRP producers could sue the copyright holders for restraint of trade. And possibly win.

Sometimes you need to pay for creative properties every time you use them. Like all the time.

This sort of thing has been common in photography circles forever.  Whoever owns the rights to a picture is in the catbird seat.  If a model doesn't pay attention to the way a model release is worded, she often finds herself losing large amounts of money when the photographer sells those nude art pictures she made ten years earlier, and so on.

Most of the music artists who were under contract and are supposed to get royalties on their stuff, often don't because they don't actually own the rights to their work.  Record company execs made fortunes off the talents of musicians and singers who only wanted to perform their music and didn't pay attention to the fine print in recording contracts. 

The record business is almost as corrupt (remember the payola scandals?) as politicians.

This is quite unfortunate.

I definitely agree that the copywrite holders deserve royalties for the use of their music. But it seems insane that the royalties would be so expensive that it would be more cost effective to go back and re-edit these episodes with other music which they will most likely ALSO have to pay royalties on.


This doesn't seem like much of a difference than a song being used in a film.  It's licensed, and royalties are paid.  Then, the film goes into home video.  I assume that these copywrite holders are being compensated from each sale.

I hate seeing this done to classic TV shows.  There should be some way for this to be arbitrated.  In this case, most of these songs are not played in their entirety.  I heard that royalties are not required if less than 10 or 12 measures of the song are used on radio.  So, if I remember the show correctly, many songs would fall in to this category if the same rules apply.

To me, copywrite holders should be happy that they can make some money...  They are doing no further work, and a reasonable royalty should be acceptable.

Quoting VibroCount:

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Quoting jgilligan:

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To me, copywrite holders should be happy that they can make some money...  They are doing no further work, and a reasonable royalty should be acceptable.

So someone else gets to determine how much money my creation is worth? And if they don't want to pay me more, they can continue to use it as they choose?

Bah, humbug.

I wrote a paper in 1966. I was (very well) paid for first North American serial rights, yet I still retained copyright (not copywrite... it's the right to vend copies). I sold additional rights to the publication to include the paper in a book they published. We were both happy.

Then, without printing my copyright information on it, a British magazine reprinted it. I sued to obtain my international copyright back. I won. The publisher went (UK style) bankrupt to avoid paying me or the other writers from whom they stole. By my paper being published without a copyright, every publisher in Europe and Asia decided the material was in the public domain. The paper has been reprinted hundreds of times, often without my name, often with edits (which can cange the tone of the paper), and under other people's copyright. I cannot afford to chase them all down. The paper is intact on the internet, without my name.

I've lost all income from it, yet it remains the definitive paper on cheap, highly effective modifications to a weapon of revolution. My work, my research, my skills in writing it, but I no longer make a cent.

Yet I hear it quoted all the time.

I own all the copyrights to everything I've written: manuscripts, music, lyrics, screenplays and teleplays. You wish to use something of mine, you need to pay me. We can negotiate, but I will require my due.

That's how I earn a living.

Why should you continue to make money off my work without continuing to pay me?

I do believe that copyright holders should get paid for their work, I never said otherwise.

What I'm curious about is how much did the copyright holders demand as a royalty or licensing fee for the DVD?  If it was more cost effective for them to re-edit the shows to remove the music, then it MIGHT have been an unreasonable amount.  Re-editing the episodes can't be cheap, especially considering how long that list was the Skip posted.  But, in this case, it must have been cheaper than the fees.

As far as someone else deciding how much your work is worth... sorry, but that is the way of the world.  I can TRY to tell people what I think my work is worth, but the person paying gets to decide.  In this case, the producers of the DVD decided that it wasn't worth what they were asking.  So now the copyright owners don't get anything.  And on top of that, they probably had to pay some legal fees to keep them from using their music.


Maybe I'm just seeing this from the working stiff's point of view.  If I want to make more money, I have to go and do some more work.  I can't just get paid again for work I did last week, or last year.  Copyright holders have an amazing opportunity to continue getting paid for their work long after the work is done.  They aleady agreed to have their music used on the show, they can't rescind that.  Now, the show would like to help them make some more money...  I think I'd take the money!

Now, if the producers of the WKRP DVDs wanted to stiff the copyright holders entirely... Then I agree with their refusal to let them use the music.


And I still think it is quite unfortunate for those of us who would like to see the episodes as they originally aired.  This was one of my favorite shows as I was growing up.  You can't beat the Thanksgiving episode... that was an absolute classic!